Meany Paper

Humour, Anxiety, and Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow.

Michael Meany

Abstract

Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow suggests that the autotelic

experience occurs when the skill level of the individual matches the challenge presented by a task or goal. An imbalance of skill and challenge leads to either a state of boredom (too much skill and/or too little challenge) or to a state of anxiety (too little skill and/or too much challenge). The state of anxiety is also a key feature of comedy and humour.

Peter Waldeck argues, like Freud, that the psychological value of humour is the reduction of anxiety. Where they differ is that Waldeck argues that the comic experience is closely linked with the reduction of low level anxiety where elevated levels of anxiety greatly impair the ability to appreciate humour. The relationship between humour and anxiety is a useful instrument for the writer attempting to construct a comedy using the common structures of comedy; repetitions; inversions; and, the reciprocal interference of series. The focus of anxiety needs to be alluded to and then discharged. Through comic moments of superiority/inferiority, humane comedy, reality denial, verbal wit, and incongruity, anxiety can be discharged to humorous effect.

This paper examines the association between anxiety and humour in relation to the concept of flow. Can the autotelic experience be achieved by a reduction in anxiety brought about by humour? Can we laugh ourselves into flow? Keywords Humour, Anxiety, Creativity, Flow, Autotelic Experience.


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The purpose of this paper is to examine the interrelationships between humour, anxiety and the concept of flow. The following diagram illustrates the structure of these interrelationships. The first section introduces the theories and structures of humour and, by extension, examines a function of humour; the reduction of low level anxiety. The second section looks at the concept of flow and its relation to anxiety. The third section deals with the conflation of humour and creativity. It argues that the similarities between humour and creativity are more a matter of our response to novelty than to a deep understanding of either topic.

Balancing Skilland Challenge

Flow Anxiety

HumourAnxiety reduction through humour

Achieving Flow through humour?

Figure 1: Illustration of interrelationships

1. Anxiety and Humour

The writing of comedy has been considered in a range of ‘how-to’ books that suggest strategies, structures and rules of comedy 1,2. Also, comedy is a well-developed area of psychological research – Freud’s theory of Witz, Komik, and Humor appears to have started an ongoing interest in the psychological value of comedy 3. What all these texts tend to share is the categorisation of types of comedy. Waldeck suggests the following types:

Superiority/inferiority - comedy based on our feelings of superiority or the relative inferiority of another;

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Humane comedy - the depiction of the social world as ultimately harmless and benign; Reality denial - comedy based on the denial of our physical or social limitations; Verbal wit - the comedy of brevity, verbal mastery, and word play; Gallows humour – the darkest comedy that focuses on the ‘sacrifice of the outer self’; and, Incongruity - the comedy of the bizarre or unexpected outcome 4.

These categories of humour appear to have evolved in response

to the developments in theories of humour. Goldstein and McGhee in their 1972 text provide a listing of humour theories including:

Biological, Instinct and Evolution Theories suggest that laughter and humour are “built-in” and are “good for the body”; Superiority Theories argue that a sense of superiority is central to the humour experience; Incongruity Theories suggest that humour arises from “disjointed, ill-suited pairings of ideas or situations”; Surprise Theory argues that surprise or unexpectedness are regarded as necessary to experience humour; Ambivalence Theories suggest that the conflict of incompatible emotions is the basis of humour; Release and Relief Theories argue that humour functions as a relief from stress or constraint; Configurational Theories suggest that humour is based on the insight of things falling into place, the pleasure of ‘getting the joke’; and, Psychoanalytical Theory argues that psychic energy that can not normally be expended due to the strictures of the superego can be released through humour 5.

Humour, particularly those styles based on irony, satire and

parody, requires that the audience, “the implied reader” 6, shares with the writer “an experiential world as a touchstone” 7. These styles of humour depend on a duality of meaning based on a recognisable experiential world and a subverted other world. These styles of humour can be theorised in terms of the recognition of ill-suited pairings, or emotional ambivalence, or configurational humour that results from the sudden, surprising


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appreciation of a thitherto unrecognised relationship between ideas. All of these points of view offer insights into the structure of humour.

Waldeck argues, like Freud, that the psychological function of humour is the reduction of anxiety. More precisely, Waldeck argues that “the comic experience is closely linked with the reduction of low level anxiety” 8 where elevated levels of anxiety “greatly impair the ability to appreciate humor” 9. This in some measure explains individual responses to comedy; that which one individual finds humorous, others find humourless, possibly offensive. The focus of anxiety needs to be alluded to and then discharged. “A joke seems funny only if it arouses anxiety and at the same time reduces it” 10. Then through comic moments of superiority/inferiority, humane comedy, reality denial, verbal wit, and incongruity this anxiety can be discharged to humorous effect.

The requirement that low level anxiety needs to be aroused before it can be discharged by humour is explained by Lefcourt who makes the distinction between “state” and “trait” anxiety. “Anxiety as a trait may indicate a continued readiness to experience arousal and distress” 11. By contrast, in the state of anxiety, at the moment of arousal, studies have shown that “humor mitigates feelings of hostility and anxiety” 12.

Section 3 will examine the relationship between theories of humour, in particular the Incongruity, Surprise, and Configurational Theories, and aspects of creativity that have lead to a conflation of humour and creativity. The following section looks at the relationship between anxiety and the concept of flow. 2. Anxiety and Flow The concept of flow as developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes the interplay of skills and challenges as part of an individual’s intrinsic motivation to perform a task. The state of flow is described as “a very positive condition; people should feel happy, strong, concentrated and motivated” 13. Csikszentmihalyi describes nine elements of the flow experience:

1. There are clear goals every step of the way. 2. There is immediate feedback to one’s actions. 3. There is a balance between challenges and skills. 4. Action and awareness are merged. 5. Distractions are excluded from consciousness. 6. There is no worry of failure. 7. Self-consciousness disappears. 8. The sense of time is distorted. 9. The activity becomes autotelic (it becomes an end in itself) 14.

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Of these elements, the link between challenges and skills is best seen as a dynamic rather than a static relationship. “This is the reason why flow is a force for growth: Unless people get better at what they are doing, they can’t enjoy doing it any longer” 15. The figure below illustrates the ratio between challenges and skills. “When skills are above average and challenges below… this would correspond to the condition of ‘boredom’. When the challenges are above average and skills are below… [results in] the condition of ‘anxiety’” 16.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Anxiety

Boredom

Skills

Cha

lleng

es

Figure 2: Optimal experience is predicted in the diagonal area where the ratio of challenges and

skills equals one. The conception of anxiety used here is directly related to challenge level of the task being undertaken, as such, in Lefcourt’s terms, this is another example of anxiety as a ‘state’ of the individual rather than as an ongoing ‘trait’ of the individual’s personality. This being the case, then it seems plausible that humour could be used as means of reducing anxiety thereby allowing the individual to engage in the state of flow. However, there appears to be two flaws in this logic. First, the affect of anxiety in this case has already been aroused by the lack of skills or the magnitude of the challenge. This would seem to preclude the effectiveness of humour on ‘challenge-anxiety’. The pre-existing state of anxiety may well be at the heightened level that Waldeck argues impairs the individual’s appreciation of humour. The level of anxiety could be increased by an attempt to use humour. Second, the state of anxiety in the flow diagram is an outcome of the interplay between the two variables of


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challenge and skill. For humour to operate on anxiety in this context, anxiety and boredom would both need to be reconfigured as another pair of variables. This presents the conclusion that flow can be achieved with sufficient manipulation of four variables: challenges; skills; anxiety; and, boredom. None of the studies referred to in Csikszentmihalyi’s works suggest this as a strategy. Csikszentmihalyi, in Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention, makes the connection between the systematic nature of creativity and the individual experience of flow. The following section examines the conflation of creativity and humour. 3. Humour and Creativity A straw poll of corporate ‘creativity training’ websites revealed a surprising conflation of the concepts of humour and creativity. Sites like Humor University 17, Think Inc 18, M1Creativity 19, and Creativity Unleashed 20 all promote their creativity training courses based on the humorous nature of the presentations. The conflation of humour and creativity has developed as a result of pattern-matching between structural aspects of humour and aspects of creativity.

Humour is by far the most significant behaviour of the human mind… The significance of humour is precisely that it indicates pattern-forming, pattern asymmetry and pattern-switching. Creativity and lateral thinking have exactly the same basis as humour 21.

Likewise, the M1Creativity website states that, “Arthur Koestler

and Edward de Bono both make the point that the mental mechanics of humour and creative thinking are the same” 22. American neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran believes humour should be formally taught in schools. In an article printed in the Melbourne Age newspaper he argued that:

There is a strong link between creativity and humour. Humour should even be formally taught, he said. ‘You wouldn't think you'd normally have jokes and humour as part of a school syllabus, but I think they're very important because they teach people how to be creative,’ he said. ‘Jokes involve juxtaposing seemingly unrelated ideas, seeing something from a novel vantage point, and that's the basis of all creativity.’ 23.

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The theories of humour, particularly the Incongruity, Surprise, and Configurational Theories, appear to mirror much of our recognition of creativity. A creative idea or object may well be composed of incongruous elements and surprise us. It may also surprise us by being a new configuration of older elements or ideas; Guttenberg’s printing press is an example of this. Once we comprehend the new object we may exclaim, “Why didn’t I think of that!” The response to a creative object is similar to our response to humour. However, this perceived similarity is more a matter of our response to novelty than to a deep, structural understanding of either humour or creativity. Edward de Bono in an article called Serious Creativity, a work that preceded I am Right, You are Wrong, argued that the conception of creativity as always having to be ‘fun’ had made engaging people in serious creativity training problematic 24. The real power of using humour in ‘creativity’ training would be to mitigate the state of anxiety we feel when presented with learning something new. 4. Conclusion All three topics discussed in this paper, humour, anxiety and flow/creativity share common terms and elements: anxiety is an element of flow and humour; humour has a relationship with anxiety reduction and creativity; and, our response to humour and creativity appear to very similar. However, this paper has attempted to show that the conception of each of these elements is sufficiently different to make direct parallels between them deeply flawed.

Endnotes

1. Vorhaus, J., The comic toolbox: how to be funny even when you're not. St. Leonards N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin. 1994.

2. Halperin, M., Writing Great Characters: The psychology of character development in screenplays. Los Angeles.: Lone Eagle Publishing Co. 1996.

3. Holland, N.N., Laughing, a psychology of humor. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1982. pp.48-49.

4. Waldeck, P.B., Weighting Delight and Dole: a study of comedy, tragedy, and anxiety. New York: P. Lang. 1989. p.74.

5. Goldstein, J.H. and P.E. McGhee, eds. The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues. Academic Press: New York. 1972. p 5 – 13.

6. Iser, W., The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Responce. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1978. p.34.


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7. Schlueter, J., Dramatic Closure: reading the end. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 1995. p.35.

8. Waldeck, op cit., p.68 9 ibid., p.66 10 ibid., p.66 11. Lefcourt, H.M., Humor: the psychology of living bouyantly. The

Plenum Series in Social/Clinical Psychology, ed. C.R. Snyder. Waterloo, Ontario: University of Waterloo. 2001. p 115

12. ibid., p 65 13. Csikszentmihalyi, M. and I.S. Csikszentmihalyi, eds. Optimal

Experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; New York. 1988., p 260

14. Csikszentmihalyi, M., Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. First ed. New York: Harper Collins. 1997. p 111-113

15. Csikszentmihalyi, M. and I.S. Csikszentmihalyi, eds. op cit., p 262

16. ibid., p 262 17. Fry, A.,Humor University: Fun Solution for Serious Problems,

viewed on 10 January 2007,http://www.humoru.com/index.html 18. Freedman, P.,Think Inc - Services - Creativity Training And

Talks, viewed on 10 January 2007, http://www.think-inc.co.uk/serv_training.asp

19. Weeks, D.M.,M1Creativity - Creativity training, viewed on 10 January 2007, http://www.m1creativity.com/

20. Birch, P. and B. Clegg,Creativity Unleashed,21 December 2006. viewed on 10 January 2007,http://www.cul.co.uk/

21. Bono, E.d., I am right, you are wrong : from this to the new Renaissance, from rock logic to water logic. London: Viking. 1990.

22. Weeks, op cit. 23. Cauchi, S.,Unlocking the creativity gene, viewed on 10 January

2007,http://www.theage.com.au/news/Science/Unlocking-the-creativity-gene/2005/04/29/1114635748788.html

24. Bono, E.d., Serious Creativity, viewed on 10 January 2007, http://www.debonogroup.com/serious_print.htm

Bibliography

Birch, P. and B. Clegg,Creativity Unleashed,21 December 2006. viewed

on 10 January 2007,http://www.cul.co.uk/

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Bono, E.d.,Serious Creativity, viewed on 10 January 2007,http://www.debonogroup.com/serious_print.htm

Bono, E.d., I am right, you are wrong: from this to the new Renaissance, from rock logic to water logic. London: Viking. 1990.

Cauchi, S.,Unlocking the creativity gene, viewed on 10 January 2007,http://www.theage.com.au/news/Science/Unlocking-the-creativity-gene/2005/04/29/1114635748788.html

Csikszentmihalyi, M. and I.S. Csikszentmihalyi, eds. Optimal Experience: Psychological studies of flow in consciousness. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; New York. 1988. , p 260

Csikszentmihalyi, M., Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Collins. 1997. p 111-113

Freedman, P.,Think Inc - Services - Creativity Training And Talks, viewed on 10 January 2007,http://www.think-inc.co.uk/

Fry, A.,Humor University: Fun Solution for Serious Problems, viewed on 10 January 2007,http://www.humoru.com/index.html

Goldstein, J.H. and P.E. McGhee, eds. The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues. Academic Press: New York. 1972. p 5 – 13.

Halperin, M., Writing Great Characters: The psychology of character development in screenplays. Los Angeles.: Lone Eagle Publishing Co. 1996.

Holland, N.N., Laughing, a psychology of humor. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1982. pp.48-49.

Iser, W., The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Responce. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1978. p.34.

Lefcourt, H.M., Humor: the psychology of living bouyantly. The Plenum Series in Social/Clinical Psychology, ed. C.R. Snyder. Waterloo, Ontario: University of Waterloo. 2001. p 115

Schlueter, J., Dramatic Closure: reading the end. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. 1995. p.35.

Vorhaus, J., The comic toolbox: how to be funny even when you're not. St. Leonards N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin. 1994.

Waldeck, P.B., Weighting Delight and Dole: a study of comedy, tragedy, and anxiety. New York: P. Lang. 1989. p.74.

Weeks, D.M.,M1Creativity - Creativity training, viewed on 10 January 2007,http://www.m1creativity.com/ Author Identification Michael Meany is a lecture in New Media at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

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